


Dreams

by maglor_still_lives



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23287957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maglor_still_lives/pseuds/maglor_still_lives
Summary: Troubled pasts make restless sleepers.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 53





	Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to tumblr user @visions-decisions-and-revisions for the excellent proofreading!
> 
> Also: if you spot any typos or editor's notes in the text, don't hesitate to leave a comment! I posted this in a hurry and I'm a bit worried I missed something.

His horse leapt and surged underneath him like a ship on a wild sea, buffeted by the currents of elves and orcs that flowed around him. The sky was black with roiling clouds, riven by red lightning that forked between the sooty heavens and the blood-smeared earth. Gouts of flame shot from the hillside where the Balrogs’ molten flails and white-hot blades crashed down upon the warriors. 

He could see everything from atop the stallion: the armies slowly crumbling, falling apart under the relentless bludgeon of the Dark Ones. The treachery—the slaughter—all of his making.

He watched a spearhead of orcs hack their way toward him, and adjusted his grip. His arm was tiring, and he had half a mind to surrender. Not to capture—never that. But he could still fall upon his sword. If he had another hand, he might have unstrapped his armor and waded naked into the fray.

A faint knocking encroached on his senses, as if from outside the battlefield. Like a thrush against a rock, or a child against a door. He must be going mad; the war had warped his mind. There was no door, no child—he woke up. 

He could only half-restrain a strangled cry as he bolted upright, wrenched from one consciousness into another. The knocking paused. 

He breathed deeply, beginning the ritual of separating the present from the past, reality from dreams. He’d gotten quick at it by now. Eru knew he had plenty of practice. 

After a few exhales, the knocking resumed. He jumped a little, but composed himself. “Yes?”

He knew before the voice responded that it wasn’t any of his normal attendants. The knock was too gentle to be his lieutenant, too tentative to be a guardsman, and too present to be his brother. Maglor had left on patrol five days ago—he shouldn’t be back yet. That left few possibilities. 

“It’s me,” a small voice said, muffled by the oak. “Can I come in?”

_ Children _ . He took one more breath, then stood and crossed to the door.

The night was warm, verging on balmy. When the breeze rustled his nightshirt, he realized he was soaked in sweat.

He opened the door a crack to reveal the face of one of the half-elf twins, illuminated in blinding candlelight. “What do you want?” 

The half-elf’s voice trembled. “I couldn’t sleep.”

_ Neither can I, now you’re here _ . He squinted through the flame. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

“I don’t know.” The voice kept getting smaller as the twin shrank from the door. “Never mind. I’ll go back to bed.” He turned away and his bare feet began pattering down the stone hallway. 

Maedhros watched the candle disappear, wondering why guilt was starting to gnaw at his fëa. It wasn’t for any of the usual reasons, and he became annoyed at it, clenching his teeth and trying to drive it from his mind. He began to pull the door shut. 

But he stopped. He knew exactly why he was ashamed.  _ Children, always the children. _ He stepped into the hallway. “Come back. I’m sorry.”

The footsteps stopped. “You mean it?”

“Yeah.” He watched as the dark head came bobbing back down the hall, the candle flickering with the child’s steps. “Come in.”

He shut the door behind them. “Why can’t you sleep?”

The poor thing looked petrified. His voice, already quiet, had faded to almost a whisper. “Bad dreams.”

The height difference was comical for Maedhros—looking straight down, the child resembled nothing so much as a cylinder with an anxious, upturned face—but he realized it was probably terrifying for the smaller one. 

He squatted next to the boy, keeping an impassive face out of habit as one of his knees stabbed with pain. So much was said about the magic healing of the Eldar, but he found the old injuries never truly went away. When he was tired or under strain, he could feel the aching ghosts of a thousand scarred-up wounds.

“What’s so bad about the dreams?” he asked. This was an area of great expertise for him. 

“Everything’s on fire, and Elros and I are trapped in our closet, and the whole tower’s falling down, and my mother is screaming—“ his words cut off into little sobbing gasps. 

The guilt that had withdrawn when he’d called the child--Elrond, as he now knew--back returned in piercing waves. His stomach clenched and his throat burned; he swallowed back the pain and composed himself.

“It’s alright,” he murmured, although it wasn’t. At least the dream had revealed which of the peredhel this was. 

The pain in his knee was getting worse the longer he crouched. He folded himself cross-legged on the floor, hunched a little over his aching stomach, shoulders rounded as though the warm breeze was an attacker. “I’m sorry I was rude to you earlier. I was having bad dreams too.”

Elrond sniffled. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He laughed a little, ruefully. “Always have.”

“Why?”

That was a question he couldn’t answer. “Lots of reasons.”

“Is it because of your hand?” The boy’s gray eyes were eerily piercing compared to his youthful face. 

He thought for a moment, searching for an acceptably vague answer. Something Maglor wouldn’t flay him alive for saying to a child. He came up empty. “Sort of.” 

“What happened to it?”

_ Damn _ those big silver eyes! Guileless and naive with a damning trace of empathy. —innocent—empathetic—naïve—he He could not lie any more than he could tell the truth. “An accident,” he evaded. “In battle.”

"Like the ones in the hospital?"

“Yes. Sort of.” Amon Ereb was filled with amputees, most with injuries far more grievous then Maedhros‘s. He was sure Sirion had been the same. 

“That’s really sad. I’m sorry.”

“That’s life.” His head was starting to throb, because why wouldn’t it? Maedhros had never been one to worry overmuch about his health, but he was beginning to suspect that if he didn’t get more sleep, he’d crumble at the seams. 

He looked at Elrond. “Do you think you can go back to sleep now?”

“Maybe.” Elrond stood as though his feet were rooted to the floor. The barest hint of a pout began to appear. 

_ Don’t you start with that,  _ he thought at Elrond “What do you usually do when this happens?”

“I talk to Maglor.” Elrond swayed a little, never budging. 

“And what does he do?” Maedhros stared the child down, almost without meaning to. It was what he did to intransigent diplomats, merchants, and relatives; they always broke eye contact first. These small power games were so practiced, they were almost a reflex.

“He sings to us.”

“Not an option. Does he do anything else?”

“He reads us stories sometimes.”

_ When did my brother become so fatherly? _ “Maybe that will work. But we won’t do it here. I have no good books.”

Elrond’s face brightened. He turned to go down the hall, but stopped at the doorway and looked back. 

Maedhros unfolded himself from the floor, silently cursing the stiff muscles and scars that tried to drag him back. Was this what fading felt like? A thousand aches and pains as the tribulations of centuries made themselves felt? This bone-deep weariness, the desire to fall from consciousness into gentle dreams?

No; it could not be. Fading was for the virtuous; fading was for those who would be healed, body and soul, in Aman. This was just him feeling his age. 

Elrond darted through the door, and he followed, chasing the dark thoughts from his head.  _ You are here. You are alive. You have not yet failed. Is that not enough? _

His long legs matched the pace of the scampering child. The corridors were still dark, and not even a night watchman crossed their path. The gaps beneath the doors were dark and silent, the rooms’ occupants hopefully getting more sleep than he was. 

They arrived at the twins’ library in short order. It had belonged to one of their scholars, but he’d vanished before the attack on Sirion. Maedhros's lieutenant swore he'd seen the scholar among the refugees during the attack. An early deserter, no doubt.

Now it was a playroom, of sorts, filled with whatever ancient toys they could scrounge from the surrounding villages, and a few shelves of crumbling books that had been salvaged from Himring, or perhaps even Tirion. Elrond pulled a stool up to the bookshelf, climbed on it, and began searching through the volumes.

Maedhros stood in the doorway. It wasn’t often that he came here—the children lived on a different side of the fortress, and he didn’t have much to do with them during the day. He mostly saw them at mealtimes, and even then, Maglor always shepherded them, carefully keeping them out of the way. Maedhros knew how hard his brother tried not to upset him. It always made him a little sad to see the once-vibrant Maglor walking on eggshells in his presence. To think they used to be close friends. 

Elrond selected a volume— _ The Rites and Festivals of the Vanyar— _ and hopped down from the stool, wobbling a little under the weight of the massive volume. A bit of attention, it seemed, had already improved the boy’s mood vastly. 

“That’s your choice?” Maedhros asked, not moving from the doorway. 

“Yes.” Elrond held it up to him triumphantly. “It’s big, right?”

_ Are you trying to impress me?  _ he wondered.  _ Why? _ He balanced the tome in the crook of his right arm and used his left hand to flip the cracked, dusty pages. “It’s long,” he agreed. 

“Can you read it to me?”

“It’s in Quenya,” he pointed out. “Can you understand it?”

“Some. Maglor’s teaching us. Well, no, a tutor’s teaching us, but Maglor helps sometimes. He doesn’t usually have time to spend time with us, but som—“

“All right. All right. I’ll read it.”

He seated himself in an armchair and located the first page. “ _ The Vanyar are acknowledged by the world as the eldest kindred of the Calaquendi, and by their own styling, are declared the noblest and most pious kindred.  _

He stopped short as Elrond made the dangerous scramble to clamber onto his lap. Maedhros found himself fixed in his place, frozen while the elbows and knees dug into his body as the boy got himself settled.

He waited a moment to let himself relax, then continued. 

_ “Owing to their intimacy with the Valar, the customs of the Vanyar are intricate and often lengthy in the extreme. In this account, I will divide the types of festivities into seven sections: Eru-worshipping, Valar-worshipping, self-glorifying, historical, natural, mundane and auguristic. _

Elrond’s eyes had already begun to glaze over. He kept going. 

_ “The Vanyar take pride in their connection with the higher beings, to the point where they seem to wish to ascend to the rank of demigod themselves. This event has not yet been documented, and all Maiar interviewed on the subject of spiritual promotion were doubtful it was possible, so the Vanyar console themselves by pretending to be.” _

Maedhros couldn’t resist a smirk. His were certainly a judgemental people, and in this case, not particularly subtle about it. He missed the days when mutual yet peaceful disdain was the most important thing a scholar could write about, and the market for such trifles was so large that even such a mediocre work could be published for a significant profit. 

He continued for a few more paragraphs, but Elrond was already fast asleep. 

He couldn’t move now. He set the book on the ground.

It had been an odd feeling at first. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him; maybe his lieutenant had a few weeks ago, when they were unrolling a map? Even Maglor, who’d always been the more personable of the two, avoided him now. 

But it was still so familiar. He’d raised too many siblings to not know how to comfort a young elf. It was easy, so much easier than comforting an adult. Children were still willing to believe the world was warm and comfortable and that someone would eventually take care of them. Adults knew better. 

He wondered if the author was still alive. He couldn’t recall any anthropologists in his army, but then again, an anthropologist wouldn’t have lasted long in battle. Perhaps he hadn’t ventured across the sea at all. Perhaps he’d been happy where he was, writing his treatises, sliding backhanded insults at the Vanyar.

Maybe they'd all be back there someday, if the gods had mercy. Probably not; but it was nice to think about.


End file.
